Stu’s Notes: England and Australia’s Cricket Beef

England beat Australia in soccer this morning. This probably feels pretty good for…English cricket fans?

Yesterday, we wrote about an Australian newspaper flying a helicopter over England’s practice to take pictures. Spygate-style stuff, except if spying was something you did conspicuously and immediately bragged about for your own business interests. Funny story, yada yada, we were able to make a joke about sexism. As we were closing the tab, though, something else caught our eye. The Australian paper responsible for flying the helicopter (it is very funny that flying helicopters is on the list of things media outlets do—feels like a children’s show’s version of the world) included the following in their piece:

“It might not be in the spirit of football, but after last month’s men’s Ashes cricket series we will let the moral arbiters England pass judgement on what is and isn’t acceptable in the world of sport.”

What the hell?

Clearly, there was some Aussie–English beef going on, and it was centered around cricket, and we needed to know. You cannot tell us our friends are fighting over that weird game they like to play and we don’t like to play and then not expect us to want every gory detail.

Well, we dug in, and what we learned was that during the second match of what is apparently a best of four series (how in the world does that work), Australia caught England with its pants down. I’m going to mix in some baseball terms here for the ease of all of our understanding (I trust that if you know cricket better than baseball, you already know all about this incident), but what happened was that the English batter, Jonny Bairstow, ducked under a pitch, then thought time was called and stepped out of the batter’s box. This must make you vulnerable to getting out, because with time not called, the Australian catcher (wicketkeeper, technically, and what a term that is), Alex Carey, threw the ball at “the stumps” (I assume this means the wickets, but I’m hesitant to declare that with any sort of certainty). Bairstow was out.

English fans were furious. They thought this was a classless move. Maybe the team thought this as well, but the fans were especially furious, and because this happened right before the lunch break (cricket sounds awesome, we need to follow some cricket) the bad blood boiled over inside the Marylebone Cricket Club. As Wikipedia puts it, “The lunch break saw unsavoury scenes in the Lord’s Long Room, with three MCC members suspended for their part in an incident with various Australia players.” The best part is that this is England and this is cricket and this is something called the Marylebone Cricket Club, so these English fans were all wearing suits as they caused this ruckus. There are videos of this out there but I am on a plane (more on that in a moment) and do not have a link handy. Australia ended up winning that match, and when the series tied 2–2 Australia retained the urn which serves as the trophy for this cricket series.

Many, many apologies to the cricket fans in the room for all the things I’m sure I’ve gotten wrong in here.

Is the NWSL Communist?

There’s been a lot of clatter among our grifter class lately around the topic of whether women’s soccer players are anti-American.

I’m more worried about the executives.

The NWSL is reportedly fining the Kansas City Current more than $55,000 for taking a charter flight to their recent game against Louisville. There wasn’t a direct flight available, the club says, and the league says that doesn’t matter, that it’s still breaking a rule. The rule in question? One designed to avoid giving some teams unfair competitive advantages.

I understand the desire to keep teams from gaining too large a competitive advantage through, say, flying a helicopter over a closed practice, or using performance enhancing drugs, or putting an extra player on the field somehow. But taking a charter flight? Flying to a game in a slightly more convenient manner? That’s against the rules?

If you limit enough competitive advantages, at some point it becomes communism. I would offer that the NWSL is at that point. What kind of league needs to make its players sit through a layover at O’Hare to keep things competitive? Is Chili’s running the NWSL?

Also: $55,000? Tell me how much that is in NFL money, please. What’s the conversion rate.

I’m Going to the Cubs Game!

Tonight and Friday both, actually. Very excited. Haven’t seen the Cubs in person all year. Was supposed to a few weeks ago (that Friday game against the Cardinals where the Cubs escaped with help from the bad calls against Burleson), got Covid instead (and took copious notes on the games, because I was very much stuck in my home for five days). In between, though, I’m going to see my nephew, and he’s about to turn three, and his first Cubs game is coming up on Saturday. As a birthday gift, then, I need to get him a Cubs jersey at the team store, and I can’t decide which player to go with.

I’m pretty set on Dansby Swanson or Nico Hoerner, because my brother—this child’s father—is on a big kick of wanting to use everything he sees in sports as an example to his son of how to play the game the right way, and also those guys should be around the Cubs for a while, God willing. Swanson’s the better player, of course, but Hoerner’s such a grinder. Also, while good hair is so important in life, I don’t want this kid to think that if he doesn’t develop excellent flow for whatever reason later in his years, he can’t be a good middle infielder.

This is all moot if they don’t sell toddler-sized jerseys in one of the blue alternates. I can’t get a three-year-old the pinstripes. That child does not do his own laundry, and I would like to maintain what I think is a good relationship with my sister-in-law.